Tong Family

Mac Rumors: Apple Mac Rumors and News You Care About

ThinkSecret updates with claims that both MacBook and MacBook Pro updates are coming sooner than expected. (As an aside, “Anandtech”:http://anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=2985&p=9 has seen no real world performance improvement with moving to this chipset, which means that used or refurbished MacBook Pro’s could be great buys, the only big thing will be if there is a shift to an LED screen from LCD in the 15″ MacBook Pro).

The rumor site had previously pegged MacBook Pro updates for WWDC, but now expects an announcement “as early as Tuesday,” echoing a previous page 2 rumor by Gizmodo. The new MacBook Pro is expected to utilize features from Intel’s recently introduced Santa Rosa chipset.

Appleinsider concurs with this report with their own claim that the MacBook Pro will see features such as “faster front-side bus speeds of 800MHz, and second-generation Core 2 Duo mobile processors that scale up to 2.4GHz.” They also believe the new MacBook Pro will house the new LED backlit displays. Appleinsider, however, gives no time frame for the revised Pro laptop.

Meanwhile, based on dwindling supplies of the consumer MacBook, ThinkSecret believes we will see a MacBook update in the near future, but they can only speculate that the MacBook may utilize the Santa Rosa chipset. However, they do not believe that the new MacBook will incorporate LED screens. Appleinsider is more confident that the next MacBook revision will not introduce any new features (such as Santa Rosa) and instead be a very modest update.

Finally, Appleinsider adds details of the rumored “ultra-portable” MacBook. They believe that this upcoming 13″ laptop model (and not the MacBook revision) will ship with the rumored 13″ LED Panels that Apple has been investigating. The rumor site summarizes the features they believe this “ultra-portable” will have:

Ultra-Portable MacBook

• 13-inch ultra-thin, LED-back lit display
• No optical disc drive
• On-board NAND flash for faster application launching and boot times
• Built-in iSight webcam
• Thinner and lighter than existing MacBook offerings
• AirPort Extreme 802.11n enabled
• MagSafe power adapter
• Target launch late ’07, early ’08